


My Heart Don’t Skip a Beat, Even When Hard Times Bump the Needle

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: On My Block (TV)
Genre: F/M, Finale spoilers, Monse POV, Post-S1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 12:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14285064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: post-s1 fic, with spoilers for the finale.“Monse knows that all great things come in threes. She’s known it since grade school.”





	My Heart Don’t Skip a Beat, Even When Hard Times Bump the Needle

_Title from “[Pray for Me](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DK5xERXE7pxI&t=ZTRmYjhmMmI1OGQzNDBlODI4NzNiZDRhZjc0MDY4MTk1MGE5NzUzYixvNTY2SkNZVg%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&p=http%3A%2F%2Ftheshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F172823516849%2Fon-my-block-fic-my-heart-dont-skip-a-beat-even&m=1)” by Kendrick Lamar & The Weeknd._

**My Heart Don’t Skip a Beat, Even When Hard Times Bump the Needle**

_“All great things come in threes…”_

She hears Ruby’s voice echoing in her mind as Abuelita follows the ambulances to the hospital, driving zig-zags down the familiar streets and muttering the rosary and pleas to San Judas under her breath.

Monse knows it’s true. She’s known it since grade school, when the boys she walked home with became her friends, and then her best friends, and then her family. The three of them couldn’t have been more different, but they were the greatest thing that ever happened to her.

And now all of it, everything, hangs in the balance.

**1\. Jamal**

For the rest of her life, Monse knows she’ll be grateful that Jamal wasn’t at the quince that night. She’ll look back on that fight in the church as a blessing. Not because of the temporary fissure it had cracked in their friendship – one that felt so insignificant now, if he would only answer his damn phone to hear her apology – but because it kept him safe.

She thinks about Jamal’s parents, how worried they’ll be when they hear what happened, how relieved they’ll be that he wasn’t with them. Monse has always liked the Turners, even back when they used to look at her funny for being the only girl in the group, even when they inspire an acute surge of longing somewhere just behind her lungs.

It’s one of the things that brought her and Cesar together in the first place, that biting sadness, the shameful envy that sometimes burned so hot it singed their bitter words, taking Ruby or Jamal by surprise. No matter how much they tried to explain, their friends could never really understand what life was like without a mom and dad at home, a complete family unit waiting for them at the end of the day. Together, the two of them had learned to toe the line between being grateful for the households that took them in like family, and wanting it so desperately for themselves.

Monse knows part of the blowup at the church was about that feeling. She remembers the afternoon that she was ready to tell the rest of the group about what she thought she had seen in Brentwood, how she was planning to track her mother down, even if it wasn’t the woman she had brushed past that night. But before she could speak, Jamal had blurted out the story of coming clean to his parents about football. They weren’t even mad, he relayed, with a baffled smile. They just wanted him to be happy.

The friends had all laughed at the irony, and clapped him on the back in shared relief. Monse had wondered, though, if anyone else felt jealousy slide bitter down their throat like acid.

She knows too, that they’ve been having some version of the same fight every few months since sixth or seventh grade – as soon as they got old enough to articulate the feelings behind the recurring rift. It was always too easy to take Jamal for granted – just like you don’t appreciate the constant sunshine in L.A. until a few dark, rainy days string together, sweeping detritus down to clog the storm drains and flooding the streets. He was the buoy that kept the group afloat, when Ruby got in his head too deep, when Cesar had trouble with the Santos, when Monse sunk low into the loneliness of her empty house. Jamal was always there.

She’s so glad he wasn’t tonight.

* * *

**2\. Ruby**

Monse understands that, on some level, they’ve always been scared of losing Ruby. Ever since the fifth or sixth grade, when it started to sink in just how smart he was, they’ve wondered when he would leave them all behind. She and Jamal and Cesar have rarely spoken it out loud, but she knows they’ve all felt it, any time he joined a new academic team, any time his mother would wax poetic about the private schools she’d send him to if only the family could afford it. It felt inevitable that he’d go someday, to an Ivy League college on the East Coast or a tech job in the Bay.

But it was never supposed to happen like this.

He had poured his entire heart into that party, and Monse knew better than to think it was simply because of his super-sized crush on Olivia. That’s just who Ruby was. He’s been taking care of them for years, forging signatures on permission slips and cutting his tamales in half when one of them couldn’t afford lunch. It was even Ruby who had talked the others into “officially” letting her in the group, way back when Jamal was still half-sure cooties were a real thing.

_“Diversity is the key, boys, trust me,” he had persuaded, Napoleonic even before all of their growth spurts left him behind. “Think of the opportunities!”_

_“Besides,” he added, sealing the deal, “she’s better at kickball than any of us.”_

Ruby was the type of friend who would hire a horse and choreograph a dance just to put a smile on your face. He was the type of brother you knew would make an amazing husband and father someday. He was the type of romantic that everyone fell in love with eventually.

Unfortunately, he was also the type of hero to jump in front of a bullet meant for someone else.

She’s so angry his perfect night ended like this.

* * *

**3\. Cesar**

And then of course, there’s Cesar. Cesar, who holds her hand so tightly in the back of Abuelita’s car that she worries he might break a bone. Cesar, whose newly-shaved head makes him look like the man he shouldn’t have to be just yet. Cesar, who was sick with guilt over a bullet that came from someone else’s gun.

He stays with them at the hospital for longer than she expects, ignoring his constantly-buzzing phone, until the nurse finally enters the waiting room to tell them that they’ve been able to stabilize Ruby. He’s not out of the woods yet, but it’s the first good news they’ve heard in hours. Mrs. Martinez even cries harder. Abuelita ducks her head and keeps praying.

Monse’s temporarily-lifted spirits don’t last, though, when Cesar disappears into the bathroom down the hall and emerges with his tie tucked into his pocket and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows.

“I have to go,” he tells her tersely when she follows him to the exit.

“You don’t.”

“I have to make this right.” She’s known Cesar almost her whole life, but she’s never seen him like this, anguish tattooed across his face like it might be permanent. “Oscar’s waiting.”

“The cops were just here, they know it was Latrelle.” He had disappeared casually down a nearby corridor when the uniforms showed up, scrubbing a hand over his shorn head like he was trying to hide it. She knows better than to think mentioning the police will be any kind of comfort, but she’s getting panicky as she runs out of ideas. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Don’t be stupid, Monse.” He’s angry, but not at her, not really, and his jaw clenches so tight she can see it just below his cheekbones. “You’re a lot of things, but you’re not stupid.”

“Stupid?” She’s worried sick about Ruby, and Olivia, and now about Cesar, and the fear inside her is starting to boil over into something combative. “I’m not the one running out to get myself killed!”

“That’s not gonna happen,” he insists, like he has any way of knowing that. “I just have to do what I should have done the other night.”

He reaches a hand up to run through his hair, like he normally does when he’s nervous. Monse sees the moment he remembers it’s gone, watches him ball a fist and slam it hard against his thigh. So she takes both of his hands in hers and eases them open, soothing her thumbs against his palm.

“Cesar, please….” She’s not really sure what she’s asking for, but her actions seem to work a little better than her words. He takes a deep breath, in and then out, and steps forward until he can rest his forehead against hers. In the stillness of the stolen moment, all she can feel is the catch of his breath and the tremor in his hands.

It’s not until then that Monse fully understands what’s about to happen. Whatever went down with Latrelle the other night was the beginning, and this is just the middle. Even if Ruby and Olivia pull through, there will be more suffering, more casualties. The shots tonight were the start of a war, and the only things standing between Cesar and the front lines are Oscar’s car, the automated sliding doors of the hospital entrance, and her.

“Listen,” he tells her then, in a voice that’s almost just a breath, “if something happens to me…”

“Don’t say that.” This time she knows what she’s pleading for, biting her bottom lip until she tastes copper. The burn of unshed tears in the back of her throat makes every word agonizing. “Don’t  _go_.”

He looks at the doors, and then back at her, and for a second, Monse sees a flash of something in his eyes that makes her think he’s ready. Ready for what, she’s not certain. Ready to stay, ready to run, ready to defy Oscar and the Santos’ twisted sense of loyalty. But then he ducks his head and it’s gone, just as quick and electric as it came.

He kisses her, hard and fast, and it’s wonderful and awful in the same gut punch. She tastes salt on their lips, but knows her own eyes are still dry.

“I love you, Monse.” She almost misses it, too busy memorizing the lines of his face, just in case he can’t keep any of his promises. And he doesn’t wait for her to answer, just turns and strides out the door without a look back.

When it finally hits her, he’s gone. Her hands are cold and curled around nothing, and her heart feels like it’s been split clean down the middle.

Monse walks back to the waiting room with her face set in stone, sits down in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, and waits for the world to right itself. When her eyes wander to the armed security guard stationed in the corner, she slips into a memory so vivid, it may as well have happened yesterday.

_For a few months in elementary school, the group’s favorite playground activity had been a made-up game called “Bodyguard.” The rules were simple: Whoever got to the playground first would race to claim the smaller jungle gym, the one with the enclosed dome at the center. Once they all arrived, one person would stand “bodyguard” outside while the others conducted business. Sometimes they were movie producers, sometimes they were club owners, sometimes they were international jewel thieves, it just depended on who was picking, and what sparked their imagination. Classmates would line up outside to take a meeting, or be allowed entrance, at the bodyguard’s discretion._

_They started on a rotating basis, but as the weeks wore on, Cesar would almost always volunteer._

_“I’m the tallest, I should be the bodyguard,” he would protest when the rest of them tried to persuade him out of the role for the day. Monse thought maybe height didn’t have everything to do with it, however, when she heard him him proudly tell Oscar about the game._

_One day, she and Ruby and Jamal decided to force the issue, standing in formation outside the jungle gym and refusing to budge. They were all the bodyguards today, they told him, and he had to run the business himself. It was only fair._

_“I don’t even know what to be!” Cesar had protested._

_“You can be whatever you want!” Jamal practically squawked, hanging upside down by his knees. “That’s the beauty of it!”_

_“Yeah, Cesar,” Ruby encouraged, “what do you want to be?”_

_“I don’t know!”_

_“An architect.” Monse thought of her friend scribbling cityscapes in the margins of all his worksheets. A month earlier, they had learned about France, and he had drawn the Eiffel Tower on the inside cover of her notebook when she told him it was now her favorite building in the whole world. “You should be an architect. Design buildings and houses and stuff.”_

_“A top-secret architect!” Jamal was off and running with the idea before Cesar even had a moment to think. “Designing a top-secret… amusement park! CESAR LAND!”_

_“You don’t have to, Cesar,” Ruby reminded him, ever the diplomat. “It’s whatever you want.”_

_“No,” Cesar had insisted with a grin that was missing two teeth, “I like it.”_

_So, the three of them stood guard, while Cesar went inside and drew, on a piece of scrap paper he had folded up in his pocket. He took no meetings, the three of them outside sent their frustrated classmates away with glee as they hung lazily on the jungle gym._

_And when the bell rang and he emerged, there it was on the paper: Cesar Land._

_“Okay, so there’s the entrance, right?” he showed them excitedly as the teachers hustled them back to class. “And right in the middle is Monse Mountain, that’s the biggest, funnest ride in the park. Then there’s Jamal Junction, that’s where all the arcade games are, Ruby’s Racetrack, Oscar’s Oasis…”_

Monse didn’t know enough to understand it all then, what it had meant that Cesar’s wildest dreams were monuments to the people he loved. But she does now.

He comes back to her that night after all, appearing beside her window an hour or two after Ruby’s mother sends them all home from the hospital with a tight hug and a promise to text as soon as she had news.

He looks shattered, and Monse knows that this time, they might not be enough to put each other back together.

It’s not until he crawls through the window, stumbling when his feet touch the carpet, that she notices the mark on his forehead. It looks like dirt, but she sees it more clearly when she cups his cheeks in her hands and he drops his chin to his chest, avoiding her eyes. It’s a smudgy cross, like the one Abuelita comes home with on Miércoles de Ceniza, but this one is the deep maroon color of dried blood. It makes Monse’s stomach turn with a new kind of dread.

Silently, she leads him to bathroom and grabs for a washcloth, but he pushes gently past her towards the shower. “Do you mind if I–?”

She shakes her head, still unsure of her words as Cesar peels his tank top off to reveal more stains on his skin, dark red smudges she couldn’t see at first on the black cotton. She’s certain her reaction will show on her face, so she turns from the bathroom and busies herself grabbing a clean towel and raiding her dad’s dresser to find him a clean t-shirt and shorts for him to wear. She hears Cesar pull back the shower curtain, and tries not to think about the water running red at his feet.

He might be in there for just a few minutes or a full hour, it’s hard for Monse to tell after she leaves the fresh linens on the counter by the sink. She’s exhausted, but she props herself upright in her bed, back straight against her headboard, and waits for him to come back to her once again.

When Cesar crosses the threshold to her room, she tries not to gasp. Maybe it’s the look on his face, or the way he’s slightly swimming in her dad’s clothes, but he looks so young, like a boy she knew years ago, back before their world got so heartbreakingly complicated. He lays down next to her without a word and curls his head to rest in her lap, exhaling so deep it feels like he’s been holding his breath since they parted ways in the hospital.

Monse’s head’s been spinning for hours, and she wants to tell him everything, suddenly so aware of how little time any of them might have left. She wants to tell him about going to see the woman she thought might be her mother. She wants to tell him that some part of her had really believed in Roller World all along. She wants to tell him how it felt to hear him say that he loved her.

She wants to tell him how much she misses his hair, but instead, for now, she brushes her fingers over what’s left and tells him the most important thing. “Ruby’s still stable. He’s got another surgery tomorrow, but they’re pretty sure he’s gonna make it.”

Cesar’s eyes flutter closed at the news, a moment of relief Monse knows won’t last.

“Olivia’s worse. The bullet didn’t exit, which the doctor said is bad. They’re not sure…”

Her voice cracks, and she can’t finish the sentence, can’t vocalize the thought that her newest friend might be gone for good. That’s when she starts sobbing, for the first time all night. Everything hits her at once, wave after wave, over and over again. Ruby, Olivia, Cesar, Jamal, her mother, her father, she sheds tears for each of them until she loses count.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Cesar sits up halfway, enough to pull her down to the pillow next to him and wrap her in his arms, tucking her head under his chin. “C’mere.”

He’s warm and strong, and he smells like her dad, and all of it only makes Monse cry harder. “It’s not fair,” she whispers into his shirt, through sniffles and hiccups. “We just… She just… It’s not fair.”

Cesar doesn’t tell her it’s okay, or even that it’s going to be, just pulls her in tighter. If she’s honest, Monse’s grateful not to bother with the platitudes. They may be young, but they’ve lived enough life to understand how much it can hurt to try and convince yourself of an impossible dream.

It might not be okay. It might never be.

So she just cries, and he just holds her, until her tears slow and she can open her eyes again to see his face, narrowing in concentration as he wipes the drops from her cheeks with a swipe of his thumb. Her mind is still racing, like someone’s aimlessly flipping channels through her subconscious. She’s grieving and she’s grateful, all at the same time. Because she’s alive. Because he’s still here in front of her.

“I can’t believe she gave you up. For me.”

She thinks of Olivia, handing over her boyfriend at her own birthday party, because she could see the truth they hadn’t been able to hide. Olivia, who’s now fighting for her life with her family hundreds of miles away.

“She knew,” Cesar answers, low and serious. “She knew she never really had me in the first place.”

Monse thinks of Ruby, so sure about the power of true love.

“It’s not fair.” She says it again, and this time she’s talking about even more.

“I know.”

He stares into her eyes and she thinks about how easy it would be to kiss him now, how good it would feel to fall into each other and just forget everything else. If this were any other night, if they lived any other lives, this might be one of those perfect moments. But they don’t. And it’s not.

“Cesar,” she whispers, when her breathing has slowed to normal, “what happened tonight?’”

He looks up at the ceiling for a long moment, and she’s watching him so closely she can see his lower lip tremble. “It wasn’t even Latrelle,” he tells her. “The Prophets have him on lockdown. Oscar lied.”

Monse bites the inside of her cheek and tries not to sneer at the mention of Cesar’s brother, the one who’s supposed to be keeping him safe.

“We cruised around until we found one of them. Creeper saw this skinny kid in green outside the 7-Eleven on Slauson. Probably wasn’t even bangin’ yet.” They’re inches apart, her head is still propped on his arm, but he still won’t even look at her. She reaches down to grab hold of his free hand, but it doesn’t work. He pulls away.

“They made me stand guard while they got him started,” Cesar grits out, and Monse pictures the kid with two missing teeth posted up outside the jungle gym. “Then Beto marked me, and handed me his machete.”

Her stomach rolls again, another full flip-flop that sends bile up to burn at the back of her throat.

“They told me it was my last decision.” It’s silent in her room, save for his shaking voice, and Monse worries she’s forgotten how to breathe. She’s dizzy, and the air feels heavy around them. “But then the sirens started, and they bailed out.”

She breathes a sigh of something that’s too bitter to be relief. “What did you do?”

“I ran.” Cesar squeezes his eyes shut tight and turns his head into the pillow, pulling his arms in to tuck against his chest. “I don’t know if the kid– I just wiped off the handle, and I ran.”

Now it’s his tears that dampen the pillowcase between them, her hands trying to hold them together. She reaches up to cup his cheek, and dips her forehead against his. It feels familiar, and almost safe, like an anchor in a raging sea.

“What am I gonna do, Monse?” He sounds so broken, if she had one wish right now, she’d ask for an answer to give him. “That’s my brother, and he– That’s the only family I have.”

“It’s not,” she insists, pressing her lips to his brow with all the weary conviction she’s got left. “You know it’s not.”

She remembers this summer, when her biggest worry was what she was going to say to Cesar when she saw him after writing camp. She remembers weeks ago, when her biggest worry was getting him free of the Santos. She remembers yesterday, when her biggest worry was the consequences of a slow dance.

Their problems are different now, massive and overwhelming and unknowable, more than they’re equipped to handle. The only thing that gives her hope is that they can face it all together, the only comfort she can find is the feeling of him next to her. “I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out.” She wraps an arm tight around his waist and waits to hear his breathing slow to match her own.

Monse doesn’t expect to fall asleep, and she doesn’t even really expect the sun to rise the next day. But all of a sudden she’s blinking her eyes and it’s morning. The events of last night come rushing back to her, hit her in the gut like a freight train, but she stays perfectly still, save for her heart pounding away in her chest. Cesar’s still asleep beside her, one arm wrapped around her waist, breathing deep and even. She knows this will be the last peace he has for a while, and she leaves him to it, staring at the ceiling and wondering what’s come.

She’s so in love – and so, so scared.


End file.
